


The Song Is Ended (But The Melody Lingers On)

by mackenziebutterschnapps (hannibalsbattlebot)



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Angst, Corn Smut, M/M, Major Illness, Sadness sickness and death, its a corn disease get your mind out of the gutter, loudly implied cannibalism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-16
Updated: 2015-11-16
Packaged: 2018-05-01 23:09:06
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,849
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5224490
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hannibalsbattlebot/pseuds/mackenziebutterschnapps
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Many years post-TWOLT. Hannibal trusts Will with his life and, ultimately, with the details of his death.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Song Is Ended (But The Melody Lingers On)

**Author's Note:**

> Here's a [playlist](http://8tracks.com/mk-butterschnapps/the-melody-lingers), if you want to really ramp up the sad

He was almost as dangerous dead as he was alive.  It wouldn't take long to scratch the surface of Edmund Burke's façade and find the cannibal underneath. A quick fingerprint check would do it. Maybe that didn't matter to Hannibal wherever his heathen soul was now, but Will, on this earth, needed enough time to get himself lost.

It was hard to burn a body to ash and Will knew better than to try. But he needed the destructive, cleansing power of fire that would scour traces of them from the house, blacken and crumble their personal papers and make the infamous unrecognizable.

 It wasn't a desecration; he told himself as he splashed gasoline around the house, it was a Viking funeral. Hannibal would have been happy to know that once the acrid petroleum smell burnt off, the entire neighborhood downwind from their house would catch tantalizing whiffs of woodsmoke and barbeque. Hannibal would go out as he lived, making people hungry and then horrified.

On his way out of town, Will stopped long enough to mail a postcard to Lem. He couldn't find a postcard with a corn field on it, so he settled for a kudzu-covered barn.

 

> _Dear Lem, Sorry. The corn field was just the beginning. We lied, so you don't owe us any loyalty. Don't tell your story, sell your story. Wait for Freddie Lounds. She knows how to turn tragedy into $$$._
> 
> _– ~~Neil Franks and Edmund Burke~~  _
> 
> _\--Will Graham and the late Hannibal Lecter_
> 
>  

 * * *

"I want to give you something," Hannibal said, raising his head off Will's chest. "Before my procedure tomorrow."

"Oh yeah?"

He sat up and took a brown leather case from the nightstand and unzipped it, revealing  a hypodermic syringe and several glass bottles.

"Drugs," Will said. "You want to give me drugs. Is it heroin, Sherlock?"

Hannibal made an equivocating gesture with his hand.  "Morphine. Keep this safe.  I may need you to use this if my procedure tomorrow yields poor results.""

"Are you so nervous about tomorrow that you are planning your final exit?"

"I'm just planning for all eventualities."

Will zipped the pouch back up briskly. "The doctor said it was probably nothing. It's an outpatient procedure. They just aspirate some fluid—why am I explaining this to you? You're the doctor. You'll be fine. You won't need euthanasia. You'll barely need anesthesia."

It wasn't the procedure or even the slim threat of cancer that worried him. There was something wrong, but it wasn't caused by the small almond-shaped mass in his abdomen that was almost certainly benign. The problem he felt was in his mind.

He called what the doctor was going to do the next day his "procedure" because he hadn't been able to remember the word "biopsy."

Words which had always dipped and flowed the way Hannibal wanted now danced out from between his fingers.

Forgetting medical terms? He was rusty. It had been a while since he had practiced medicine. When the musical notation and mathematical formulae in his notebooks started moving around on the page, losing their meaning, Hannibal got reading glasses.

The first time he called Will "Darling" because his name didn't spring right to his lips, he went to the doctor for an evaluation. He had passed the easy cognitive test, which required him to give the date with year, name the president, and, to his chagrin to "draw a clock." In defiance, he started sketching Big Ben from memory, before the doctor stopped him. "I think you are well oriented to time and space," she said. "We'll keep an eye on it, and come back if it gets worse, but occasional forgetfulness is a normal side of aging."

There was a lot he could lose before it registered on these tests. He was his own best diagnostician. Hannibal started assembling the kit that day.

 

Will put the bag on the top shelf in the closet, behind some shoe boxes. He didn't give it much thought. Its not like he would ever use it.

 

 * * * 

 

Hannibal's slipping vocabulary worried him the most, but it was the music that gave him away to Will. He started playing the same records over and over. One day he couldn't get through a single song. He let the music play for a few seconds, picked up the needle, repositioned it, and played the selection again. And again. For nearly an hour.

Will finally snapped. "Could you, maybe, give it a fucking rest?"

_I'm trying to figure out this phrase. Something about it bothers me._

Hannibal played the music again.

_Listen. Right there. Did you hear it? Does it sound wrong to you? Does someone in the brass section come in late?_

Will smiled at him, his eyes dancing with light, so alive.

"I'm sure you just said something incredibly profound or romantic, but you forgot, Hannibal. I don't speak Italian."

 

 * * *

 

Hannibal was waiting for Will in the chapel. He was wearing the white windowpane suit and had the short prison haircut and the prison pallor. Will wondered which of them had chosen this venue.

"Is it dementia?"

_The early stages._

"What do you want me to do?" Will asked.

_When the time comes, I want you to give me a quick end. I'm dying the slow tortuous death of the fragmented mind and when the day comes when I would need to use my escape route, I might not have the wherewithal to do so._

"Then do it now instead of putting the burden on me. Take your fate in your hands while you still can."

_If it wasn't for your company I would have done it myself already._

"I release you from any obligation. I can do fine on my own. Don't hang around on my account."

_I'm being entirely selfish._   _Its simple mathematics. If I'm myself 10% of the time and I live for another year, that’s 36 and a half extra days that we wouldn't have had otherwise. In between, we suffer, but we know how to do that. Pain is our medium._

"What if I refuse?"

_If I linger, I will wind up in a prison hospital for the rest of my days and everyone I wronged will make a pilgrimage to spit in my food and gawk at the old diminished man spouting gibberish and shackled to his cot. Would you want that for me? Sick dogs get put down,Will. Don't tell me you aren't capable of it. You are._

"I know. Capable and willing are two different things."

_It won't be easy for you and that's why I trust you. I gave you this trust years ago. I'm just reminding you.  Look at this as a renewal of vows.  Won't you gain some satisfaction in getting to be the one who judges my sanity for a change?_

"No," Will said, tightening his grip on the railing in front of them. "I'll do it, but it won't bring me any pleasure. You can blackmail me into doing it, but you can't make me like it."

 

 * * *

 

Will came home with the forgotten shallots and the house was hazy with acrid smoke that thickened as he got closer to the kitchen.  Hannibal was standing in front of the stove looking at a pan. It was over high heat and still belching out smoke.

"What is wrong with this food?" Hannibal asked. "The food is…flawed."

Will reached around, wretched the burner to off and moved the pan over. What looked like it had been chicken breasts were now glued to the bottom of the pan with the tarry remains of whatever sauce this had been.

"Its burned," Will said.

"How?"

"You left the flame too high or something. It happens."

Hannibal's bafflement gave way to sudden anger. He picked up the smoking pan and shot it into the sink where it shattered two of the delicate wineglasses that had been sitting there from the night before.

_It doesn't happen. Not to me._

Will took care of the clean-up, picking glass out of the sink, scraping out the pan and setting it in the sink to soak. The chicken was blackened on the bottom and raw on top. Hannibal hadn't turned it over even once.  He had stood and watched as it was slowly ruined without doing anything to stop it.

 

 * * *

 

Hannibal's phone rang. Will held on to both their phones now, deciding if it was a good day for Hannibal to talk to the person on the other end. On the days where he was prone to outbursts, or too far in the past, Will just shut off the phone altogether.

Today it was Lem, who they knew from the farmer's market. A genial guy who perfectly fit the description of 'old-timer' with his bib overalls and relaxed view of life. He sold goat's milk and cheese at the market. His wife also made heavenly scented goat's milk soap, or she had until she passed away earlier that year. Since then he and Will had gotten to know each other better. Lem had nursed his wife in her final years and he understood the mixed feelings that came with mourning a spouse who was still alive.

"Hey, Neil," he said. He knew about the call screening, but he always called the phone of the person he wanted to talk to.  "Edmund fit to chat?"

He peeked in the room. Hannibal was stretched out on the couch reading.

"Think so. I'll try to put him on."

He walked in the room waggling the phone. "Call for you."

Hannibal stood up with his book and walked over to the coffee table. He put his book down in the center of the table and took a step back. He stood in quiet military parade rest with his hands behind his back.

Will held out the phone but he didn't take it.

"Should I tell Lem you don't want to talk today?"

He nodded his head toward the table. "I'm on my best behavior," he said.

So today he was back in jail.

If it was anyone else on the phone he would have ended the call, but Lem had a way of taking things in stride, left over from his days caring for his wife.

Will set the phone down and backed up. Hannibal wouldn't touch it until he was out of the room. "Keep it short and civil, doctor," he said and backed out of sight. He didn't have a door to close but hoped being out of sight would be good enough.

Will sat close enough to listen, in case he needed to intervene. He couldn't hear the words, but the tone was light and conversational. Lem was good with people. He had an almost infinite supply of kindness that never came off as condescending or falsely modest. Calling up his friend "Edmund" wasn't an act of charity and Will appreciated it. Friendships were hard enough to maintain in the best of times.

After a while the voice from the other room stopped. He was about to go get the phone back before Hannibal tried any outgoing calls, when his own phone rang.

"Neil, its Lem," he said. He was unusually curt. "Its not me to tell you your business, but have you ever thought of finding a place where Edmund can get more care."

"I can't put him in a home," he said. "You didn't put Ella in a home."

"Should have," Lem said. "She was sweet as sugar when she had her whole mind about her, but she could get confused and angry. They all do, you know, even the sweet ones. It just about used me up taking care of her, and she weren't a big strapping man, you know. "

"I can't put Edmund in a home," he repeated. "What did he say to you?"

"Started out fine," Lem said, his voice was higher than usual. "I just called to tell him the sweet corn was back in the market coming this weekend."

Hannibal and Lem had been conspiratorial about the farmer's market. A few of the sellers bought produce from California and unpacked it before they put it out on their tables and tried to pass it as local. Lem had cracked that story for Hannibal. In return, Hannibal shared his home cooking, which Lem appreciated since without Ella to cook for him he had reverted to eating like a bachelor.

Will knew this was good insider information from Lem. Getting to the market early on the first day there was sweet corn for sale was a real coupe. It meant summer was coming. They could go together, him and Hannibal. It would be a nice outing. Choosing the right produce was like meditation for Hannibal. It focused and calmed him.

"He started telling me about corn smut," Lem said "which I heard of before but don't know much about. Some kinda fungus grows on corn? I guess people eat it like it's a delicacy and I said 'Shoot, Edmund, is there anything people won't eat?," and he said he would try anything at least once and we had a good laugh about that."

There was a pause. "Go on, Lem," Will gently urged him.

"Well, then Edmund starts talking about a dead body in a corn field. He's talking like he seen it. Just this tone of voice like I'm talking to you right now. Chill me to the bone talking 'bout its skin all cracked up--"

Will cleared his throat. "His past is not a happy one, Lem. It's possible this might have happened to him or it might have been a movie he watched. It sounds more like a movie, though, doesn't it?

"Probably so," Lem said. Although the doubt was still in his voice.

"Is that what bothered you? Edmund talking about a movie like he lived it?"

"Well, that and…He's starting to get to the point where he's asking after people. Saw that in Ella, too. She would ask after people been dead for decades. Good part is she wanted to talk to people she forgot she hated. Edmund got any family that you know of? You know a Will?"

"He asked for Will?" He tried to keep his voice calm but he felt a cold sweat prickling the back of his neck.

"Sure. I said 'Put Neil back on the phone' and he said 'Neil is dead,' cool as you please, and said 'Is that so?' and he said 'Yeah he choked on his tongue,' and I was being my usual self and said 'Well why would he go do a thing like that?' and Edmund said 'Because I told him to.' He always did have a funny sense of humor—funny like odd, I mean. I asked when did all this happen and he said it was years ago and I was being a wise-apple and asked 'Well who was that who answered the phone then?' and he said that was Will and I said 'Okay would you put Will on for me?' but he said he didn't have that privilege and it would be easier if I dialed you directly so that's what I did." Lem took a breath. "So, today he thinks you are Will, whoever that is."

"I don't know. Must be before my time."

"You could ask him. He might just tell you." Lem chuckled. "Don't be too hard on him, talking about other men he known. He don't know what he's saying. Its tempting though, innit? To start trying to get to some of his secrets. If I was you I don't know if I could resist finding out about his past. Digging it all up, so to speak."

 

 * * *

 

"What is this? Pork?"

"You tell me."

"Tastes like pork."

"The recipe doesn't taste familiar?"

"No," Hannibal admitted, spearing another tender cube of meat with his fork. "It's very good."

"Well I hope you like it, because there's leftovers." Will sat at the table and massaged his temples with the heels of both hands. "Lots and lots of leftovers."

 

  * * *

 

It was through Lem that Will was put in contact with Wanda. She was some relation to Ella and had carved out a niche as a paid companion to the sick and the elderly. Lem was vague about her qualifications. She didn't have any official nurse training, but a lot of practical knowledge and she worked cheap.

Will briefed Wanda. Edmund had a traumatic childhood. He was very clever and she had to be careful not to leave sharp objects where he out where he could get to them. He used to work at the slaughterhouse. He liked horror movies and sometimes he forgot they weren't real. It was the best explanation Will could come up with. Wanda would come in twice a week to give him a break, keep an eye on Mr. Burke and do some light housework.

"Don't talk to him," Will said. "Don't give him any personal information. Don't feed him. Just make sure he stays in the house out of trouble."

"I'm a social person, Mr. Franks," Wanda said, resting a hand above her ample chest. "And if he has a special diet, I can handle it. I've done this before."

"It will just work better this way," he said. "When he's in one of his episodes, he can be nasty. Put on some music. He loves opera."

 

Wanda lasted a month and a half. Will knew something was wrong when he pulled up and Wanda was standing on the porch, purse in hand.

"I can't work for you anymore," she said. "Mr. Burke scares me. You're a nice enough man, but I've got a waiting list as long as my arm and can afford to be choosy, okay?"

"Did he hurt you?" He looked her over. She was whole and unbloodied as far as he can see. "These patients can be out of control. Sometimes they are violent."

"I've been working with dementia patients for 20 years," Wanda said. She pressed her lips together in a thin line. "This isn't out of control. This is the most in control I've ever seen him and he was a holy terror today. When I made up his bed there was a knife under his pillow. When he saw I found his knife he smiled at me and said 'You found my backup plan.'"

"I told you, you have to keep sharp things locked up."

"It wasn't there when I helped him up out of bed which means somehow, without me noticing, he snuck out of his room down to the kitchen got the child lock off the drawer and smuggled the knife back to his room," she said. "I said 'You know you're not supposed to have a knife in your room. What would Mr. Franks say?' and you know what he said to me? He said, 'Wanda, you should find employment elsewhere because if I see your face again I will rip you open and eat your liver and I know exactly the wine I would serve with it.' I half-believe he's serious."

"Shit."

"Yeah," Wanda said. "I'm beginning to think he's got mental problems that have nothing to do with dementia."

Will paid Wanda off and then gave her a little extra for her trouble. She spared a worried glance over her shoulder for Mr Franks, and then got in her car and drove off.

Inside, music was playing, but it wasn't opera. Will recognized it, he realized with surprise. Etta James was singing her heart out about how her love had come along, at last, and her lonely days were over.

"You can't say things like that to people," Will said to Hannibal, who was at the window watching Wanda drive off.

Hannibal came forward for what Will thought was a hug or maybe a punch, but he surprised him by swinging him gracefully into his arms and starting to slow dance with him, keeping perfect time with the sweeping violins.

"I didn't like her and now she's gone. No harm done."

He was still so graceful on his feet, gliding with ease. Etta James finished her bittersweet ode. She made the eventual loss of her love so implicit in the aching earnestness of her voice. Will was relieved when she was done and Tony Bennett started to swoop his way through jazzy trumpets.   _The best is yet to come and babe won't it be fine…_

"You threatened someone with a knife today," Will said.

"Not exactly."

"You threatened to eat her liver--"

"Shhhhh. I'm back to my old self. That's a good sign, no?"

He was smiling, back in some past that never happened exactly this the way, where they danced in each other's arms and the best was yet to come.

_Come the day you're mine,_

_I'm gonna teach you to fly._

_We've only tasted the wine._

_We're gonna drain the cup dry_

Will put his head on his shoulder, closing his eyes and swallowing hard. He tried to feel Hannibal's happiness instead of his own hopelessness.

_You think you've flown before, but you ain't left the ground._

_Wait till you're locked in my embrace_

 

 * * * 

 

Will couldn't resist the nostalgic pull of having his body next to him in the night. They were in the middle of a run of good days. It was all relative. Good meant that Hannibal was quiet. Good meant that it was safe to lay in bed with him.

A good day was when the past Hannibal landed in wasn't too horrific. It was unfortunate that the past was such a terrible place, fraught with dangers and violence. The worst times were when Hannibal lost English. It was frightening for Will to be snarled at in a language he could not understand and try to reason in a language Hannibal had forgotten.

Italian and French could go either way. The romance languages often meant a romantic mood, happily nostalgic. Either the days of Il Mostro when he was young and vital and his heart full of poetry and his own becoming, or the later time when he was on the run in Florence, reality conveniently recast with Will by his side.  _The best is yet to come._

Will started to recognize Lithuanian as the worst. He didn't know what the words meant and he didn't want to know. Every word meant the same thing to Will:  _danger_. Those were the nights he slept in the other room with the door locked and a loaded gun under the pillow.

But still, Will waited. It was never the right day. It was never bad enough to say goodbye.

 

Hannibal woke him at three in the morning. His lower than average need for sleep was often a problem.  Will felt like the parent of a sick child, half asleep on his feet during the day and too worried to sleep at night.

"Hello?" Hannibal's voice was a harsh whisper. Will tried to ignore him and felt guilty for hoping he would just go back to sleep. "Hello? I would like to report a crime. A crime of murder. I took a life. So many lives. I'm the Chesapeake Ripper. I'm the Copycat."

Will opened his eyes. Hannibal was on the phone. He felt panic and then he remembered he had had the service to Hannibal's phone discontinued for this very reason.

Hannibal put his hand over the mouthpiece. "She wants to know the address."

911 still worked on discontinued phones.

Will took the phone away and forced a laugh into the mouthpiece. "Man, that isn't funny. Sorry, ma'am," he said in his best drawl. "My friend is  _so_  drunk right now. He's fixin' to confess to everything tonight. He just now told me his name is DB Cooper and he kidnapped the Lindbergh baby. Crazy asshole. Sorry to bother you." He ended the call quickly. There was no way for them to trace the call, but his heart  pounded in his chest with the near miss.

"Why would you do that?" Will asked. Before he could stop it the next words flew out of his mouth. "That was really stupid."

"I haven't been a very good friend," Hannibal said. His voice was small, without his usual pomposity. "I had to confess. I can't think of another way to get Will out of jail."

Will hung his head and took a moment to orient himself in time, in Hannibal's time. 

All the machinations that worked for Hannibal the first time were beyond him now. The fine tools of his reason were gone. No scalpels, all mallets.

"I'm the Ripper. I'm the Copycat," he said. Despite his contrite expression he smiled briefly. He was still proud of his work.

"I know," Will said. "I believe you."

"That should be me in jail." He saw the cloud pass over his face as a memory of jail flickered through his mind. He had been in jail…but he put Will in jail…he wasn't the one in jail.

"Probably."

"If I tell them…"

"You did a good job setting him up. No one is going to believe you."

"What we have to do is a substitution. An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth."

"A life for a life?"

"Yes." He said. "They gave him the death penalty. They won't let him leave. But if the real Ripper is put to death in his place, they'll have no choice but to let him go."

Will got out of bed shivering. He had (probably) fixed the situation this time, but how much longer would he be able to do this? He wouldn't even mind going to jail--he certainly deserved it—but could he stand pacing his cell, powerless, while Hannibal spent his last days without anyone around him who loved him. Chilton, Alana Bloom and Jack  _fucking_  Crawford. They would be the last faces Hannibal saw and they would not be kind. Maybe Hannibal deserved that fate, but he had always managed to shrug off his just punishments and swagger off into the sunset. Will saw no reason to change that now.

"A life for a life. That isn't a bad idea."

He moved the boxes out of the way to find the morphine kit. It was exactly where he had left it.

"When can we do this?" Hannibal propped himself up in bed. "When can we get Will Graham out of prison?"

"He can be free tonight," Will said. He opened the kit in Hannibal's sight. Hannibal pushed up his sleeve. "Are you sure about this?"

"Yes."

Will swirled the alcohol pad over the crease in the crook of his elbow.

"Any last words. For him." Will couldn't meet Hannibal's eyes.

"No," he said.  "I said everything I had to already. Words are not adequate at this point. It takes a big bang to bridge the lightyears between us and friendship."

Will found the vein and slowly injected the drug.

"Do you think he'll be upset when he gets out of jail and finds out you are dead?" Will asked.

"He'll only be upset that he couldn't administer the punishment personally." Hannibal looked up, his eyes startlingly clear with a lively mischievous gleam. The confusion he had a moment ago was gone. "It would be worth my death to have him kill, even a soft kill in this state sanctioned way. No blood spilled but at least he could have the pleasure of watching the life leave my eyes."

Will swore under his breath, looked away and a tear slipped down his cheek.

"'The Tears of The Executioner' How poetic." Hannibal said, folding his arm up. "Maybe I'll write that as a sonnet later."

Hannibal could feel unconsciousness rushing around him and flowing into him, down his nose and mouth, filling his lungs with water that was brown with decay and leaf tannins, muffling sounds and clouding his vision. It took effort to remember how to breathe and to tell his body what to do.  _Lungs, expand. Heart, beat._

He wanted to lift his hand to brush away that tear and touch Will's face one last time but he couldn't. No wonder-- he was a million miles away and his arm was made of stone. He didn't know if Will read his intention or if he needed to feel Hannibal's touch but he picked up his hand and placed it on his cheek, splaying Hannibal's fingers with his own.

_How hot his face is_ , Hannibal thought,  _but no, it's my hands that are cold._

The chill wasn't coming from the warm flesh he touched, but from inside him. His hands were going numb with the cold of it. If he concentrated, he could see across all the miles the face that he could no longer feel under his fingers. But if he concentrated on that, he forgot how to breathe.

Lungs and heart.

Blood and tears and breath.

"Its beautiful" Hannibal said.

Will didn’t have time to ask what he meant.

And suddenly, Hannibal wasn't there anymore to explain.


End file.
